


God I love this place

by Argentumm



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky Barnes & Sam Wilson Friendship, Bucky Barnes & Shuri Friendship, Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Friendship, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes gets a new arm, Bucky Barnes in Wakanda, Gen, POV Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 14:05:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14854214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argentumm/pseuds/Argentumm
Summary: From Brooklyn to Wakanda, this is where Bucky belongs.A multi-chapter fic centred around Bucky in Wakanda.





	God I love this place

WAKANDA 

It took Steve nearly an hour to find Shuri’s lab. Mostly because he kept getting distracted on his way over there, walking slowly, admiring the architecture and examining the Vibranium which was included and combined in the art, furniture, and even the walls. He had been given a set of Kimoyo Beads to help him navigate his way around the place, and they vibrated faintly when he reached a large siding door which had white symbols dancing across it. He waved his beaded wrist awkwardly, and the door slid open to reveal a walkway that twisted around a column covered in multi-coloured art. He walked down it slowly to what he assumed was the princess’s lab.

The walls of the lab were the dark brown rock of the mine in which it was situated, but the floor and ceiling were white and black block patterns that seemed to draw his attention to the window. He paused in wonder and looked out into the mine, his mind struggling to comprehend its size. The area seemed empty until he heard familiar voices around the other side of the painted column.

“I said breathe!” An accented voice snapped good-naturedly.

“I am breathing.” Bucky replied. His voice was light with laughter, and it reminded Steve from when they were still teenagers.

Steve rounded the column and found Bucky and the Wakandan Princess, Shuri, standing together. He was leaning casually against what looked like a very futuristic hospital bench, and she was fluttering around him excitedly, motioning with the beads around her wrist which were producing a small transparent screen.

Bucky’s dark hair was pulled back from his face, and he was watching her move about the area with fondness. It was the same way he used to look at his little sisters when they came home from beach, chattering excitedly about everything they’d seen that day. Although Shuri was probably talking about stuff a little more advanced than beaches and boys.

“You’re going to love it, trust me,” she grinned at him, her entire face alight with excitement.

“I know and I do, just show me the thing already,” he answered dryly.

“Right!” She said animatedly, “let me - oh, Captain Rogers you’re just in time!” She turned her affectionate smile on Steve, gesturing for him to enter into the area; he did so gladly. Shuri was an easy person to like, not just because she was charismatic and genuine, but also because she was whip-smart, actively seeking to improve and strengthen everything around her to make the world a better place.

He sought Bucky’s eye, checking for some kind of affirmation before entering the area that his friend seemed at ease in. Bucky had the ghost of the smile across his face, seemingly finding the whole thing slightly amusing, so Steve came up beside him, mirroring his stance by leaning against the bench.

“What’s going on?” Steve asked, glancing between the pair.

Neither answered, but Shuri ducked behind one of the screens and he could hear heavy objects being moved. When she came back, she was carrying a large metal case with a look of wild glee on her face.

Setting it on the bench the pair was leaning against, she unclipped the latches, and flipped it open with satisfied expression.

“I bet herding those goats will probably be easier with two arms, right Bucky?” She grinned at him, and Bucky had that old, smug expression on his face that reminded Steve of Brooklyn.

“Vibranium?” Steve settled with arms crossed, right next to Bucky.

“Of course!” Shuri exclaimed, “this is Wakanda, after all.” She elbowed Buck in the side where he was lacking an arm. “Go on then, give it a go.” Bucky shook his head and made a move towards the case, brushing across Steve in the process. He lifted the Vibranium arm out, examining it with a shocked sort of anticipation.

Steve imagined the old one, rotting in the base in Siberia. Maybe Stark took it home to the Avengers facility to study it, maybe even learning something from the advanced piece of technology. But that didn’t matter now, his new one was beautifully crafted, with an intimate sort of care that Hydra could have never created.

It was the colour of dark silver metal from deep within the earth. The plating was a lot smoother and more subtle than the old one, with linings of sunrise gold that shone in the artificial light of the lab. Shuri had obviously put a lot of care into the arm, mirroring it to the somewhat crude grace of his old one, bridging a sense of familiarity to make Bucky more comfortable. But it was different somehow, more _Bucky_ , shaped for him by someone that actually knew him.

“Damn, that’s really something,” Bucky murmured in appreciation. He was turning the arm around in his one hand, examining it from all angles. He gave a soft laugh when his eye caught the bare spot where the red star used to sit.

“Thank you, Shuri.” He said quietly, suddenly shook by the weight of the moment. Shuri nodded to him, her eyes kind.

Both Steve and Shuri stayed silent, letting him have a second to process it. Bucky tilted the arm ever so slightly, back and forth, watching the light shimmer mutely across it. He traced the lining with his thumb, suddenly smiling up at Shuri.

“I’m not sure if anyone’s ever told you this, but you’re a genius. This is beyond anything…” he trailed off, no words seeming to come to mind.

Everything about him was familiar to Steve, from his soft, tired eyes, to his comfortable stance against the bench. They had been calling and messaging each other ever since Bucky had woken up, sometimes they would speak five times in the span of one night, and others, Bucky wouldn’t answer him for days. He panicked the first time it had happened, driving Nat and Sam up the wall in the tiny safehouse they were hiding in Bejing. He’d contacted T’Challa who had said, with a seemingly endless amount of patience, that Bucky needed space sometimes, and he wasn’t going to be okay one hundred percent of the time. He promised Steve that his friend was safe, and was spending a lot of time at one of the villages along the river, helping the people there and, as Shuri piped in, ‘having a bit of me time’. The feeling his absence created rose in Steve’s chest like a familiar ache of fear, something he was keenly used to, but also completely unprepared for.

“Sorry, I know you worry when I go off the radar like that,” he’d apologised on video call one evening after not answering any of Steve’s contact for nearly two days. Bucky had the camera pointed to the sunset descending over the river, filling Steve’s screen with a breathtaking combination of warm oranges and purpling clouds. It felt like he was really there.

“Nah, don’t apologise for it,” he tugged his jacket tighter around himself, imagining the warmth that Bucky’s must’ve been feeling all the way over the other side of the world. He and Wanda were in Ukraine waiting on Sam and Nat to meet them after they’d investigated a tip on blackmarket dealers smuggling alien weapons.

“You look cold,” Bucky noted dryly, apparently watching Steve’s tiny pale face on his screen.

“Mm, it’s -13°C here so I’m not surprised that I look cold, _because I am_ ,” he snorted and heard Bucky’s laugh very softly.

“When are you gonna come visit me down here? Because you need to work on your tan.” Bucky said jokingly, as if he were trying to cover up the weight of the real question he was asking.

Steve hesitated. He wanted to come down first thing last month when Shuri had called, but didn’t want to put any pressure on Buck. There was no point lying about it though, he wasn’t very good at hiding his emotions or how he felt about Bucky, everyone had always teased him about it.

“Steve?” Bucky spoke before he did, sounding slightly nervous that his question hadn’t been answered.

“Sorry, I was just…never mind,” he tugged a hand through his hair. It was getting too long and dark without sun, but he didn’t mind it. “I’ll come anytime you want me to, I just thought you might need space. Sam and Nat have mentioned that I might be a bit…much, sometimes, and that it could, ya know, overwhelm you.” He said it earnestly, but in a bit a a rush. He really wanted to see Bucky’s face, but the camera stayed fixed on the sunset, the warm colours turning to dark blues and purples.

“You shouldn’t worry about me so much, Steve,” Bucky said in a sigh. Steve only looked down at his bruised knuckles, not wanting to say anything. He was sitting at the bench in the crappy kitchen of the apartment, the glow of the laptop was the only light in the room. Wanda had made him a cup of tea which sat at his elbow, before falling asleep on the couch behind him, her earphones in and red sparks occasionally dripping from her fingertips.

“Steve?” Bucky’s voice was louder now, and Steve watched as his concerned face came into view onto his laptop screen. “You didn’t let me finish. I was going to say that I worry about you worrying about me, if that makes sense?” His eyes narrowed almost comically and Bucky looked off into the distance, then back at Steve. “I know that I disappear for a while sometimes, but it’s just my way of dealing with it all. Memories come back, and sometimes they’re so bad I can’t even look another person in the eye, and other times they’re good ones, great ones, and I feel so damn guilty for not trusting that they’re real that I just have to work it out for myself.” He shrugged his one full shoulder, his mouth lifting in a lopsided smile. “Don’t ever think that I don’t want you around, okay? Even if I’m being a jerk and seem like I don’t wanna talk, I still want you ‘round,” his eyes were incredibly soft, and Steve couldn’t help but to smile back, no coherent words coming to mind. Instead, he just stared at Bucky with a dumb expression on his face, which made Bucky laugh properly, shaking his head back and forth affectionally.

“It will take us some time to put it on, as we will have to go into your chest to anchor it safely,” Shuri explained, taking the arm back and laying it in its case.

Bucky nodded, “Whenever you guys are ready, I’ve got a pretty free schedule apart from showing this guy around.” He elbowed Steve.

“Tomorrow morning, then! It should take most of the day, and you’ll need some time to recover, but once you get back on your feet, I think you’ll feel…” she trailed off, searching for the right word. _Better?_ Steve wanted to offer. _Safer? More like yourself?_ But none of the words could properly express what they were all thinking.

The truth was, Bucky was physically doing fine without his arm. The manual labour, day to day tasks, were all adaptable, and he compensated easily without the limb, only complaining once or twice that it was harder to do mundane things, or that he hated that everything always took him a bit longer than usual.

 _Still probably faster than a normal person,_ Steve had noted on the phone. He could practically feel Bucky roll his eyes at that one.

He had been healing in Wakanda, and didn’t need the arm to do it. T’Challa and Steve had not put any pressure on him to fight, even though they both knew how valuable he was, how valuable he would be in the battles to come. He did seem restless sometimes, and it made him grumpy and unwilling to talk. He would throw himself into the manual labour on the river, working three times harder than anyone there, seeking some sort of battle weary tiredness that only ever came after a proper fight. He obviously felt guilty about missing it, which made him even grumpier. He always asked about what they were up to, giving advice, offering suggestions about how to reach their target or get what they were after. He analysed the variables of the locations they were operating in, giving input about what they would need to watch out for, and the types of people they’d be running into in the underworld that Steve or Sam weren’t experienced with. His strategy was similar to Nat’s, but more aggressive and more reliant on brute force and destruction to control a situation and reach a target. His tactics also called for more weapons than Steve and Sam usually used, more about setting up a situation and attacking it head on, attempting to control it by turning it to chaos for the enemy.

Bucky’d always had a tactical mind, ever since he was a little boy studying the Great War at school. He enjoyed the maps, the strategy, and was more of a natural at it than Steve ever was. He looked at angles Steve would’ve never thought of, choosing the covert, sly options that had them sneaking and infatuating, lining up perfectly stealthy sniper shots and to hit the enemy hard and fast, leaving them disorientated and open for attack. Perhaps that’s why he had been so successful as the Winter Solider, they’d taken his strengths and twisted them to suit their agenda, reaping the benefits of his cleverness.

Maybe the Vibranium arm would give him the opportunity to get out there again one day, if he was ever ready. He seemed to be getting more involved in Wakanda too, T’Challa mentioning to Steve that he had been beyond helpful to their version of a strike and infiltration teams, giving them inside information on contacts, weapon caches, and any and all Hydra information he could remember. He navigated the endless halls and buildings of Wakanda without looking to his Kimoyo Beads once, nodding to people and sharing words in Xhosa effortlessly, as if it were no big deal. Bucky’d always been adaptable, the Winter Soldier even more so, but this was different; it was a willingness to be a part of something, making his own decisions instead of being forced to follow orders.

The thought made Steve proud, and maybe Shuri was thinking the same thing, because she was watching Bucky affectionately too, as if he were her little brother. They shared the look across from Bucky who rolled his eyes.

“You’re both giant saps.”

“And you should be used to it by now,” Shuri answered, looking satisfied. “Did I tell you he has a following?” She looked up at Steve, a mischievous glint in her eye.

“A following?” Steve queried.

“Yes, the children of the river tribe are obsessed with him, call him _the White-_ ” Bucky interrupted her, moving off the bench and towards the ramp that led out of the lab.

“Okay, okay, we don’t need to go into that,” he said, looking slightly embarrassed.

Steve was immediately intrigued, and turned to look down at Shuri, not budging an inch from his position. “Obsessed with _him?_ ” He couldn’t hide the disbelief in his voice, and his eyes flickered to Bucky who just looked annoyed. “Children?” Steve would be the first to admit that Bucky often looked scary; Sam said that he had a ‘resting murder face’, which was one step up from Clint’s ‘resting bitch face’. He couldn’t imagine children being comfortable around that level of apparent grumpiness, let alone developing an ‘obsession’ with him.

“Yes! They have been teaching him Xhosa and following him around like he’s the most interesting person in the whole country!” She laughed, clapping her hands together. “They think he’s so funny, every time I visit they’re in fits, giggling at _the White Wolf_ , hanging off of him and helping him with his clothes and hair!” Shuri was laughing, but her eyes were crinkled with pure affection. In a way, Steve was glad to see that other people could see just how good of a person Bucky was, and that Steve wasn’t alone caring about the guy so damn much.

Steve laughed in response, and they both watched Bucky as he stood halfway between the walkway and where they stood, deciding if he should fight back or flee. After only a moment of annoyed hesitation; he chose to fight.

“Well, I can’t help that I’m so charming,” he answered dryly, strolling slowly back into the space.

Shuri chortled at that, “he’s not wrong, the old ladies _love_ him, oh, Steve, you should see them absolutely _fawn_ over him!” They broke off laughing again and Bucky looked out of his element, all his previous cockiness gone.

She continued, looking giddy. “They worry about him eating enough, so they always serve him enough food for three people. If he’s gone for too long they send the children after him to bring him back to the village, if he works too hard they coddle him like a baby antelope!” She doubled over. “You should see it! He always looks so grumpy while they spoil him rotten,” Steve was grinning, his face aching in that familiar way from too much laugher.

Bucky seemed to accept his fate, his furiousness only a shadow across his face now as he watched the pair make fun of him. It was too bad that Sam wasn’t here, he would be sad to miss this; teasing Bucky seemed to be one of his favourite things to do now. The pair had revealed that they’d been messaging behind Steve’s back since Buck woke, ‘mostly trading insults’, Sam said, ‘and complaining about you’, Bucky had added.

“The name is catching on though,” Shuri added, “more and more people have been referring to you as _the White Wolf_ now, even my brother.” Bucky looked thoughtful at that.

“S’pose it’s better than the Winter Solider,” he shrugged unevenly, looking slightly awkward saying the name.

“It’s a Wakandan name, and of course it’s better than whatever Hydra called you,” Shuri answered indignantly. “But no one will call you that if you do not wish it?” She added in a question.

Bucky shook his head, looking down at his feet and smiling softly.

“Nah, I don’t mind it, and like you said: it’s Wakandan, so of course it’s going to mean something good.”


End file.
